Memeorandum

March 21, 2018

As Much As I Hate Seeing A Nazi Win Something...

The Republicans in Illinois-3 managed to draw some ghastly headlines which will be fodder for late night comedians and Paul Krugman. The NY Times manages a bit of fairness and balance:

Denounced by His Party as a Nazi, Arthur Jones Wins Illinois G.O.P. Congressional Primary

Say what?

Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier described as a Nazi by the Illinois Republican Party, won the Republican primary on Tuesday in the state’s Third Congressional District, a heavily Democratic district that includes part of Chicago and its suburbs, according to The Associated Press.

Mr. Jones, 70, unsuccessfully sought the nomination five times before, and his victory on Tuesday was a foregone conclusion after the Republican Party failed to draft another candidate to enter the race against him.

The Times coverage is decent but overlooks a lot. The short version is this: the incumbent, Dan Lipinski, is a pro-life anti-ObamaCare Blue Dog Democrat who was locked in a near-death struggle with a progressive challenger. The Nazi, Jones, had been kept off the ballot in cycles past by the invocation of technicalities. So the plan was to DQ Jones and let Republican crossover voters in the primary keep Lipinski alive. Since Lipinski won, barely, that part of the plan succeeded.

In 2016, for example, the Republican Party also failed to run a conventional candidate. Jones was the only one to submit signatures but the party managed to disqualify him to keep him off the primary ballot. They had the same plan for 2018 but Jones outmaneuvered them with a last-minute filing:

How did this happen? Jones, a perennial candidate, snookered the GOP.

Nobody else ran as a Republican in the primary because politics is a results-oriented business and the chance of a Republican winning are slim. The boundaries were drawn by Democrats to elect a Democrat. Rep. Dan Lipinski, the incumbent, will face Marie Newman in the Democratic primary, and one of those two will win on Nov. 6. There are other Democratic strongholds in the Chicago area featuring a lone Republican. It can be a Maytag repairman-like assignment.

...

Jones, who campaigned for the same seat in the 2016 primary, was removed from the ballot that year after the Illinois Republican Party found paperwork errors and filed a successful objection to his candidacy with the state Board of Elections. The GOP tried to do the same this election cycle, but Jones had cleaned up his paperwork. He also appears to have kept a low profile, collecting signatures to meet eligibility requirements by going door-to-door and then waiting until the Dec. 4, 2017, deadline to file. If only others had noticed.

If [challenger] Newman decides to run in 2020, she’d be the favorite in the race. This cycle, an actual neo-Nazi ran unopposed in the GOP primary in the 3rd District. Because the state has an open-primary system, Republican voters in the district could have chosen to vote in the Democratic primary and back Lipinski. (The irony of a Bernie Sanders-backed candidate losing thanks to crossover votes in an open primary was not lost on Twitter.)

Sophia Olazaba, a field manager for the Newman campaign, said she doesn’t doubt that some Republican voters crossed over. “Even when we were canvassing, a lot of homes have had both Jeanne Ives and Dan Lipinski signs, so those people could have crossed over,” she said, referring to the GOP gubernatorial candidate whose entire campaign was premised on her opposition to legal abortion.

Another volunteer, Sabrina Ithal, also from the 3rd district, mentioned that the open primary format could have actually worked in their favor: “I converted quite a few Republicans who voted Democrat for the first time in 30-40 years today.”

The Susan B. Anthony List, a group that opposes legal abortion, made re-electing Lipinski a major priority, dumping big money into the race and working the ground to get out the anti-abortion vote on his behalf.

So the Republicans had a strategy - leave their primary line open, disqualify Jones if he showed up (a timeless Illinois ploy familiar to Obama fans and foes) and hope their voters kept Lipinski afloat. And it could have worked, just as Virginia could have advanced in the NCAA tournament.

And just as the Illinois Republicans failed to find a challenger for Jones, another safeguard of the political system seems to have broken down, as well: The state’s ballot-access guidelines, which Mooney told me are intended to “limit the fringe element from cluttering up the ballot,” required Jones to get the signatures of 603 registered voters. I spoke with multiple people who signed Jones’s petition, and they were shocked to learn they had supported the candidacy of a former Nazi. “I probably just signed it because he asked me to,” said 63-year-old Linda Florczak-Wieser of LaGrange when I called her on Wednesday. Another voter from nearby Worth said she didn’t even recall signing the petition in the first place. And when I asked 93-year-old Alice Brunell how she felt about Jones’s views, the Bridgeview resident replied incredulously, “I didn’t know that!”

The peril and promise of these ballot access rules is that ordinary registered voters are empowered - the party bosses cannot unilaterally dismiss reform minded, "rage against the machine" candidates like in the good old days. On the other hand, sometimes shit happens.

It's easy to be an ex-post genius, but suppose the Republicans had run their own candidate but, because their energy and money was with Lipinski, the Nazi won anyway? Really bad.

Or suppose the Republicans opposed the Nazi, put some effort into it, and managed to see both Lipinski and the Nazi lose. Will that be helpful this November?

The local Republicans had a plan that could have worked perfectly but didn't. That doesn't mean the alternative plans didn't also have paths to poor results.

Apparently Republicans will muster a write-in sacrificial lamb for the November vote. And Krugman, Oliver and the other progressive entertainers will have their fun.

Trump got what he asked for in 2019 funding. That is enough money to fund one year's worth of construction. That gives Trump flexibility to get the construction started before the November 2018 midterms while still holding out hope that Mexico will help pay for some of the wall by way of the NAFTA renegotiations. IMO bad move politically for Trump to ask American taxpayers pay for all $18 billion of construction costs.

I just flicked on FBN Cavuto's show. He had on Paul Ryan's former chief-of-staff. Who said what this budget does is gives them time to really develop the budget correctly over the next year/months.(paraphrasing).

WTF, WTF. They had the f.........g time to do it before and they did not.